Hard drive making a scratching/clicking noise and Macbook playing up

Hi all,
I have had my Macbook for 2 years in March, and last night I discovered that my hard drive started making a scratching/whirring/clicking noise every now and then, also, it has been playing up really badly. It seems to be whenever I try to access certain files or applications, and if I do, my Macbook will completely freeze up and can take up to a minute or two to fix itself.
So, in a panic, today I bought an external hard drive (a 1TB My Book for Mac) to back up in fear that my hard drive would crash, but whenever I tell Time Machine to back up, the progress stops in the same spot (1.09GB out of 105GB) and after a few minutes gives me an error message saying that the hard drive cannot be read.
So, does anybody have any ideas as to what's going on? And if I take it into my nearest Mac repair shop (we don't have an Apple Store in my city) will they be able to fix it without losing too much of my data?
Hardware Overview:
Model Name: MacBook
Model Identifier: MacBook4,1
Processor Name: Intel Core 2 Duo
Processor Speed: 2.1 GHz
Number Of Processors: 1
Total Number Of Cores: 2
L2 Cache: 3 MB
Memory: 1 GB
Bus Speed: 800 MHz
Boot ROM Version: MB41.00C1.B00
SMC Version (system): 1.31f0
Serial Number (system): *********
Hardware UUID: 6A2B870D-5356-597D-89EC-C7F8889CAEB1
Sudden Motion Sensor:
State: Enabled
Feel free to ask for any more information if you need it.
Thanks (I hope).

In this particular case, I would recommend that you get an inexpensive external enclosure for your current internal 2.5" drive. Then, pick up a new drive and do a fresh install of OS X on it. At this point, you may have enough damage that restoring from a TimeMachine backup (or a clone)may result in copying over corrupt data which might result in stability issues. Also, by limiting the use of your old drive (as in not trying to make a clone or TimeMachine back up)you'll reduce the chances of doing further damage. The fact that your machine still runs seems like there would be a good chance of recovering your data, but limiting the drives use is key. After you do the fresh install on the new drive, connect your old drive and grab your data from that. I would also suggest against actually doing a migration due to the potential for moving corrupt files from your old drive. At least this way you'll have a fresh new install of OS X.

Similar Messages

  • My Macbook Air is making a strange clicking noise and the startup sound no longer plays?

         I just noticed about 15 minutes ago, that whenever I turn on my Mac, every maybe 30-45 seconds it goes, "Click-Click-Click."
    I ran disk utility, and had it verify the disk, and it says everything is in the clear. I googled it, and someone had said that to stop the clicking, they just knocked on it, and it turned out to be the fan, so I tapped the part of the computer that was clicking and it settled for making a very low sounding fan noise. Is it possibly the fan and not the hard drive as everybody else has advised? And as far as the startup noise, it still doesn't "Ding" annoyingly. Any advice?

    First action to take in this situation is to fully backup your data, possibly a clone.
    Take the computer to an Apple store to have it checked out.
    Best.

  • Hard drive is emitting a clicking noise

    I bought a brand new 2.66Ghz macbook pro about two weeks ago, and I have found that the hard drive is making faint clicking noises. They are too quiet to hear in normal use, but when it's quiet, they are noticeable and annoying. This is either a sign of normal use, in which case I might want to get a larger hard drive, or of imminent disk failure, in which case I'm going to back up my data and head to the Apple Store real fast. Any ideas?
    Thanks

    Yes. It is normal to hear a clicking noise whenever a Mac portable is moved.
    It is the Sudden Motion Sensor trying to park the read/write head
    to prevent the drive damage and data corruption.
    http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1935#

  • My laptop is making a clicking noise and I think it's coming from the hard drive. Is this normal?

    My laptop is making a clicking noise and I think it's coming from the hard drive.  I uploaded audio of the clicking to: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/15528211/Memo.m4a.  Is this a normal sound or an indication of a problem?  Thanks in adance.
    Info:
    HP Pavilion G6-1b70us - Purchased 2 days ago from Office Max

    That is a hard drive clicking. It sounds kind of intermittent like it might be just the hard drive safety system parking the read head on the drive. Do you get a sustained click when you try to boot up? Have you tried the hard drive health test in the BIOS? Just tap F10 as you power up and go into the setup/bios and look for the hard drive self-test and run the long form version and see what you get.
    Here is the Service Manual, which is always a good thing to have:
    http://h10032.www1.hp.com/ctg/Manual/c02829479.pdf

  • HT1363 hi, my ipod classic is making funny clicking noises and is telling me to contact apple support, any help wo uhh ld be appreciated many thanks.            mark connolly

    Hi my ipod classic has started making funny clicking noises and is telling me to go to apple support, any help would be appreciated
    Many thanks
    Mark connolly

    The hard drive in it has failed and will need to be replaced.

  • IMac hard drive making knocking noise

    Hi everyone. I woke up my iMac this morning, and the drive was making a knocking noise. There would be three "knocks" over and over again. Behind the noise, I could hear the whine of a motor speeding up, and then dying down. It repeated in a cycle: the motor winding up then dying down while three knocks could be heard. The computer would not wake up from this.
    Finally, I rebooted with the install disc as a startup disc. When the computer turned on, it did not show the internal hard drive at all! I rebooted again, and this time the computer fired up just fine and everything was back to normal.
    I've started backing up everything to an external drive. But I'm wondering: Is it time to go shopping for a new machine? This one is about four or five years old. I assume that if my hard drive is bad, it's not cost-effective to have it repaired. Is that correct?
    Oh, FWIW, I did check the internal drive with the Disk Utility, and the SMART status said it was verified. (I don't know what this means, but I read about it online.)
    Thanks.

    Hi Roger. You were right about the pricing. I could have had a nice, much larger drive installed for about $279. But there was one thing that gave me pause: The screen was starting to show random lines and artifacts - all signs of the well-documented iMac display problems. Fixing that would have been a much more expensive proposition, and I decided a four-year-old machine wasn't worth it.
    So instead, I backed everything up to an external drive and ordered a new 27-inch iMac, which is great. But while waiting for my new machine, I had to keep my old one alive. I noticed that the drive had problems waking up after the machine was asleep or off for more than a few hours. When this would happen, I would boot up with the installation disk and run the Mac hardware test. The test never detected any problems with the computer, but for some reason, just running the test (in the extended, 10-minute mode) would "wake" the hard drive back up.
    After a few days of this, I came up with another solution. I just turned on iTunes and left it playing all night. I turned off the sound, so I didn't hear it. With this app running, the hard drive never went completely to sleep, and the machine would wake up every morning.
    When my new iMac arrived, I connected it to my old machine (after waiting a few more days for a 800- to 400- Firewire adaptor - I didn't know the two machines used different Firewire connectors!) and I used Migration Assistant to move my data.
    And with that, my old iMac died! It wouldn't boot up again at all. But it was still a good machine, and I didn't want to toss it. So I ordered a new 500Gb Seagate HD online for about $45 and a set of Torx screwdrivers. Using my new iMac to watch a Youtube video on how to replace the drive in the old machine, I swapped out the drive. The old iMac is now my kitchen computer, which I use for reading news, cruising the web and listening to iTunes. It doesn't need a large drive, since it's just used for light duty. And since it stays pretty cool (I'm not using it a lot or running CPU-intensive apps on it), the display problems so far have not reappeared.
    Thanks again for your help!

  • IMac hard drive making a chirping noise!!

    IMac hard drive making a chirping noise!! Its a quiet chirp that goes along with the hum of the hard drive. It doesn't always do it but I'm worried anyways. Has anyone else had this problem? Is it a problem?

    They told me it's likely the CPU Fan - a known issue - and said that resetting the SMU was the first step towards fixing it. I performed that reset, but the crickets in my machine are still alive and chirping. Step #2, as it was told, is to take the machine back to the Apple service center to be repaired. BUT - looking through other threads here on the same issue, it looks like the issue is currently handled by replacing the CPU fan with another identical model and that because the underlying engineering issue has not been fixed, the crickets will return.
    So if this problem is not harmful to the computer, I may be ignoring it for the time being.
    Regarding the recalls though, where did you find the serial number range for the recall? I should check mine against that list.

  • My iPod keeps restarting and making a loud clicking noise as it does.

    Also, the computer doesn't recognize at all that there is anything in the USB, So I can't even reset the iPod. I'm stuck for what to do, It wont play or do anything, just when It has battery Will bring up the apple logo, make a clicking noise and repeat this, over and over.

    This is often the description of a stuck hard drive (read/write heads stuck and can't move). I have seen a few "fixes" for this. One is to but the iPod in the freezer for a half hour then start it again and see if the differences in expanding parts unsticks it. The other more immediate "fix" is to get something firm like a phone book, start the iPod and then firmly (but not super hard) slap the ipod down on the phone book flat on its back, basically jarring it. This sometimes frees up the drive.
    Of course, I am only relaying what I have read that has worked for some people in the past. So take it for whatever that is worth and try anything at your own risk.
    Good luck,
    Patrick

  • HT1363 ipod making clicking noise and won't work

    Ipod making clicking noise and won't work. Display see apple store. We live in a rural area so one is not close!

    OK, I have the 30G w/video and it does that too. I've had it a year with no problems. My husband went on the treadmill with it a couple days ago and after a few songs it froze. I did the whole regime of toggling and pressing menu/select button, I put in on my Bose speaker/charger and it switched to very low battery warning. When I took it off to move to computer it said to connect to computer and use restore (in a few languages). I connected and it recognized it and I did restore and after a few minutes screen came up saying it could NOT restore. Then ipod was unrecognized and then ipod screen gave me the very sad little ipod picture with the support web site. At that point it began making the clicking nose - morris code does describe it but I was invisioning a little nano sprite in there with a chisel!!So, same as you, I go there and it's like a maze trying to find help!! Of course my warranty was up exactly 6 weeks ago!! I tried linking through all the stuff like finding a service provider in my area, contact the "knowledge base" etc., and I can't get anyone! Now what are we gonna do?

  • I am using FCPX 10.1.3. and want to duplicate my project, and its complete resources, to a different hard drive.  When I click "duplicate", it automatically duplicates the project in its current hard drive.  How do duplicate to a different hard drive

    I am using FCPX 10.1.3. with Yosemite, and want to duplicate my project and its complete resources to a different hard drive.  When I click "duplicate", it automatically duplicates the project in its current hard drive, unlike the previous FCPX that gave you options. How do duplicate to a different hard drive?

    Since projects are now stored in events and events are stored in libraries, you need to create a new l;bray on that different drive or open an existing library on that drive. Then duplicate your project and move it to the new library. It will copy the media. Then use the Consolidate Project File command to round up any external assets; there may or may not be any.
    Russ

  • Mac Book Hard Drive making Noise

    Mac book Pro hard drive making noise

    Are you sure that's not your CD/DVD drive? If not, and you are still worried or if something goes wrong you could get a Genius Bar Reservation at your local Apple Store.
    Hope this helps!

  • EMac and FCE using an external firewire hard drive as a Scratch Disk

    I am about to purchase a new hard drive for use with FCE as a scratch disc.
    I am looking for people who are "actually" using an external firewire hard drive as a scratch disc with FCE on an eMac.
    I am interested in the following info.
    1. What Make, Model, size HD are you using?
    2. What rpm speed and cache size?
    3. Any problems? Crashed HD's? Working good?
    4. Do you have any other firewire devices plugged into your eMac?
    I blew up 3 eMacs last year. Apple could not figure it out or anyone else.
    I was using a Lacie P3 250/8mb firewire drive as a scratch disc.
    Thanks in advance.
    eMac 1.25ghz/1gb RAM/160gb HD/Superdrive   Mac OS X (10.3.9)  

    1. What Make, Model, size HD are you using?
    I have two LaCie Porsche drives, one 160 GB and another 250 GB (more like 159 GB and 233 GB in actuality).
    2. What rpm speed and cache size?
    They're both 5400 RPM if memory serves me. The 160 drive has 2 MB cache and the 250 has 8 MB cache.
    3. Any problems? Crashed HD's? Working good?
    The 160 GB drive caused me some problems, but I'm chalking most of that up to a bad FireWire cable. LaCie replaced the cable for free, and I haven't had any significant problems.
    4. Do you have any other firewire devices plugged into your eMac?
    Since I've got a 15" PowerBook, I'm limited to 1 Firewire bus, so the two drives, a LaCie DVD burner, and my Sony Handicam are all daisy-chained together. Having the Handicam on the bus tends to slow things down, but I can certainly capture to the drives with no problems. If I'm doing a lot of editing, though, I'll unplug the camera to speed up the bus.
    I use the 160 GB drive primarily for backup, storing finished projects, and storing stock footage. The 250 GB drive is used solely for video capture and render.
    The only thing I might caution you with is that the LaCie Porsche drives are rather picky about how they get turned on and plugged into the FireWire bus. You need to plug the power in, turn them on, and THEN plug in FireWire -- it won't work if you have FireWire plugged in when you turn them on. It's not a big issue, as long as you're aware of it. (It could be that my PowerBook is a little wonky, too.)

  • My Ipod is making weird clicking noises and telling me to contact apple support. what is going on and can I fix it?

    So it started out not being about to conect to my computer then, when i changed to usb port, it went to disk mode. when i reset it it started to make odd metalic clicking noises and telling me to contact apple support. I'm freaking out cause i don't know what happened in I think its broken (its also my brothers ). I feel like i have tried everything but don't want to touch it anymore incase it breaks completely!! anybody know whats wrong with it? or possible how I can fix it?

    Contact Apple iTunes Support Center as directed in the message.

  • Clicking noise and freezing during updating

    Hello everyone, if anyone could help with the following problem i'd be more than grateful. my ipod recently wouldnt connect to windows and started making a clicking noise. to try an resolve this i have reset and restored. I thought this would solve the problem. However, when ipod is updating it seems to freeze, stop updating and clicking noise starts. the following message appears
    the specified I/O operation on E: was not completed before the time out period expired.
    the only way i can disconnect is to shut the computer down. My playlists appear but with no songs.
    this is my 2nd ipod (clicking noise also happened so ipod was replaced in warranty) which is now out of warranty. I think my hard drive might be giving up? These discussions are my last hope! Do I buy a new ipod (possibly for the same thing to happen)? or is it worth getting it serviced? Does anyone out there have any ideas?

    Even i have a Ipod with a click wheel and is behaving similarly.
    Once i connect it to the PC (using USB) it shows the "Do Not Disconnect" sign forever and even iTunes does not recognize it, the hard disk is making some clicking noise and after some time windows returns timeout error "The specified I/O operation on E: was not completed before the time out period expired" !!
    I think we are in the same boat, What do we do ???
    Thanks

  • Apple has determined that certain Seagate 1TB hard drives used in 21.5-inch and 27-inch iMac systems may fail.

    Hi
    I got an e-mail stating that Apple has determined that certain Seagate 1TB hard drives used in 21.5-inch and 27-inch iMac systems may fail, and that mine was one that may fail and to book an appointment with Genius to click here. So after making an appointment we then took out iMac to the shop affixing thirty minuets before appointment time and had to Waite until 12-45hrs. When we were told that we would have to leave the Mac with them for two to three days to replace the hard drive.
    Can anyone advise, is this normal to make an appointment only to find that when you get to the Genius department  in the Apple shop they then say because of the amount of iMacs that have come in today it will take days to replace?

    Hi mende1
    Thanks for replying but when anyone makes an appointment surely the work should be carried out then not to be told to come back days later especially when you have traveled over one hundred and fifty miles to get to the shops. It may have been a free replacement but the cost of petrol for the journey comes to more than one hundred euros.

Maybe you are looking for